James Tyson, Millionaire

JAMES TYSON, MILLIONAIRE by Lady Fletcher Read at a Meeting of the Society on 28 October 1982 The story of James Tyson, is in its way a romance, and far more worthy of relating than many of the serials that clog our television screens. It would make a very interesting series, educational and excitmg. It begins in a village in Yorkshire - Pontefract; one of those villages so different from our own, where the houses crowd closely to each other and to the street, where ducks swim lazily on the village pond, the half-timbered inn is the centre of community life, and in this case, the court house looks over the vUIage green. On a sunny morning in April 1808 a worried-looking sergeant is striding down the street. In his white trousers, red jacket, black shiny boots and black shako. Sergeant William Tyson is an impressive figure. He is going to the Court House, to which scattered groups of people are also making their way, for it is the time of the assizes. Among the prisoners in the dock is the Sergeant's handsome wife, Isabella. She stands, baby in arms, to answer the charge of petty larcency. This is described as "the theft of an article under the value of one shilling". Now we face a dilemma. Do we use the bald description of her crime found in the criminal list in the Mitchell Library - "stealing so many yards of gingham", or do we use the colorful story that is the family legend. If we choose the latter, we should have a flashback to the scene in the village street. It is the year of famine, and a child, tattered, dirty and starving is crying for food. Spumed by the baker as he passes by with his tray of bread on his shoulder, she cowers in misery. Isabella, who is waUtingpast, adds her plea, but she too is roughly repulsed. Angrily, she snatches a twopenny loaf from his tray and hands it to the child. For that crime she is to answer when the cruel and vicious sentence is passed upon her - SEVEN YEARS' TRANSPORTATION TO AUSTRALIA. Lady Fletcher is the wife of Sir Alan Fletcher, whose former Queensland electorate covered a swathe of the territory in which Tyson had interests on the Darling Downs. She is herself an experienced lecturer in historical subjects. In 1808 Australia might as well have been the moon to which she was being sent, with as little hope of return. Her sergeant had sufficient regard for her and money enough to buy himself out of the Army and accompany her, as part of the detachment whose duty it was to guard the prisoners. Their three-year-old daughter had to be left with Isabella's parents and they never saw her again. Soon after the convict ship Indispensable nosed its way through the Heads into Sydney Harbour, William found himself the owner of 110 acres of virgin forest at Appin, near Campbelltown about 45 miles south-west of Sydney, with his wife assigned to him as servant. How they must have had to slog in the unaccustomed heat to clear a small section and erect the slab-built, dirt-floored bark-roofed shanty. With no other tools than axe, hoe, mattock and spade, that 110 acres had to be bullied by two people into providing enough nourishment for the family with a surplus that could be sold to buy new implements and clothing. More children were bom to them, James being the sixth of twelve. It was a happy home, but only a few stones survive to mark the site of the chimney - one deeply grooved where Tyson children sharpened their slate-pencils as their mother taught them their A.B.C., and a line of gnarled old pear trees planted by Isabella. We can only guess at the constant humiliations, the petty tyrannies they suffered and the social stigma due to the mother's convict history. By the time James was nine the gallant WiUiam was dead, from overwork probably, and in due course Isabella married again, this time to a Thomas Clements who also had come out as guest of His Majesty. At 17 James left home to make his fortune. The only money he had to take with him was ONE HALF-CROWN. HARD APPRENTICESHIP His wages as a farm laborer were £30 per year and keep. After two- and-a-half years of this he left, taking with him £60 of his wages biU of £75. His next job was with cattle. Picture the life of this twenty-year old. He was a crack shot, so he lived off the land. His rations included wheat to grind with a stone on a stone for flour to make his damper. Often he would not take time to do this and fiUing his pocket with wheat, would throw some into his mouth as he rode along "gristing it on the hoof as he put it, and washing it down with a drink of water. He rose at dawn and settled down to sleep at dusk, thinking it unnecessary to bum the oil in his slush lamp. He lived and thought and dreamed of cattle, leaming his trade. Eighteen months of this, and he was ready to begin. With his brother William, the baby born in England, James took up a holding and bought some cattle. Bad seasons sent them on the road in search of grazing for their stock, the Great Australian Outback The Hon. James Tyson, M.L. C. Occupation. In their worry they forgot to renew their squatting licence and someone else acquired it; the banks failed and they lost the nest- egg so thriftily left for the future; and if that was not enough, the cattle found some poisonous herbage, and all but a few died. So at the age of 24 James Tyson was flat broke, ruined, a failure... One of the secrets of their success was what was called "slow grazing" - droving the cattle as slowly as possible through other men's holdings, there being no fences, so they fattened on other men's grass. Two tired young men were pushing their herd along dusty unmade roads when gold was discovered at Bendigo. James was not interested in mining, but he reasoned that wherever there were miners there would have to be meat. So he persuaded William that they should take their cattle to Bendigo. While William sold the meat and built yards and a shop, James lived on the roads looking for stock. His method was to meet the weary herds on the last stages of their long journey from far-flung stations, offer the exhausted drovers a good price which they eagerly accepted, then after ten days or so of "slow grazing", would arrive in Bendigo with his cattle in good condition and quite literally make a killing. By this time William had been joined by two other brothers to help with the butchery. After four years the partnership was dissolved. James' share amounted to £200,000. It is not on record what the other Tysons did with their money, but James was dedicated to a dream, a plan for more cattle and more LAND. He gradually bought up and acquired runs and holdings, properties and stations in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. He was no "absentee landlord", for he visited regularly and he improved them with methods far ahead of his time, sparing no expense and effort to do it. In the sixties of last century, the great Tyson properties of Glenormiston (Boulia) and Tinnenburra (CunnamuUa) were the leaders in the harnessing of the artesian bores, Hfe-blood of the far west. Felton (Cambooya) had the first hydraulic wool press on the Darling Downs, and on Mt. RusseU the water reticulation scheme was thirty years ahead of its next rival. MAN OF FRUGAL HABITS He was a tall handsome man, 6 feet 4 inches in height, with a bushy beard, abnormally, pathologically shy, and extremely frugal in his habits. The reason for the shyness was of course a complex resulting from his mother's history, and the fmgality traced back to the struggle for existence in his early years. They were the emotional scars he carried. As you wiU have gathered, there was not time for formal schooling even had there been the opportunity, but the mature Tyson was a well-informed man who wrote a flowing hand and who must have been a financial wizard. All the business of his complicated affairs was done by himself, with the particulars and details kept in notebooks in his saddle bags. He travelled between his stations on horseback, and later in a buggy, with perhaps an aborigine for company. He liked the blacks, he said. They were gentle people. "Treat them right and they treat you right".) He would appear unexpectedly to see how things were being looked after in his absence. His chronic shyness caused him to camp out even when within sight of a township or a homestead where he would have been most welcome, and to remain anonymous, giving if approached, the name of Brown or Smith. Because he could not remember the names of people he met, he addressed everyone to whom he spoke as "Mister" - not women, of course, but then he did not speak to women at all if he could avoid it. He seldom visited cities and theri only on business, went second class, he said only because there was no third; stayed at the cheapest hotels.

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